Olympia 2022 - German athletes at the Winter Games: Abandoned

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Bobsleigh pilot Felix Loch in training: Anyone who cancels for moral reasons is putting their sporting existence at risk

Photo:

Julian Finney/Getty Images

149 German athletes start at the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.

The 51 women and 98 men compete for medals in a country that oppresses minorities and runs detention camps.

According to the German secret service, the biathletes, bobsledders and ski racers must expect that they will be monitored and spied on on site.

The athletes are only allowed to stay in their accommodation because of the corona requirements.

They are carted to the competition venues on fixed routes.

The grandstands will be empty there because no spectators are allowed.

Celebrating, contact with athletes from other nations, getting to know the country and the people a little is not possible.

Anyone who breaks the rules or dares to denounce the political situation in China too adamantly risks being banned from Beijing's Olympic bubble and sent home.

What else has to come together so that athletes don't feel like going to the Olympic Games anymore?

In recent weeks, numerous athletes have criticized the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the decision to host the Winter Games in Beijing.

"We athletes now have to pay for what the IOC couldn't manage," says the German biathlete Erik Lesser.

»We are now standing there and have to justify ourselves for the Olympic Games in a country where human rights are being violated.«

The reasons why not a single German athlete wanted to do without the Corona competitions in China are different.

Some really want to fulfill their childhood dream of the Olympics.

The speed skater and flag bearer Claudia Pechstein, 49, is aiming for a world record for women with her eighth participation in the Winter Games.

Others believe that despite the circumstances, there is much to be gained in Beijing, attention, fame.

Above all, the athletes had little choice.

An athlete who cancels the Olympics for moral reasons is jeopardizing his sporting existence and must expect to lose funding and his place in the performance squad of the German armed forces, border guards or the federal police.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) wants responsible athletes.

On the way to Beijing, however, the governing body has abandoned all those athletes who were at odds with the venue.

The officials failed to allow the doubters a free decision, to create the conditions that possible Olympic refusers do not fall out of the funding system.

It would have been necessary to talk to sponsors, the associations, the German Sports Aid, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense.

"Why hasn't one at least tried to develop an exit strategy for the athletes?" criticizes Dagmar Freitag, former chairwoman of the sports committee of the German Bundestag.

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Dagmar Freitag: Criticism of the DOSB - why no exit strategy?

Photo: Fabian Strauch / dpa

Who knows how many athletes would have actually given a whistle to take part.

One thing is certain: every cancellation would have been a statement.

A powerful protest against the IOC's gigantomania, the sell-off of the Olympic values, which is experiencing a new peak at the Beijing Winter Games.

The chance to untie the athletes is gone.

Germany competes in full in the Olympic absurdistan.

The 407-strong delegation also includes 50 officials and employees of the DOSB.

A remarkable delegation, with which the association underlines how important the controversial sports festival is to it.

Shortly before the start of the competition, the new DOSB boss Thomas Weikert had nothing better to do than ramble on about what he expected from the German team: something between 19 and 31 medals.

The president sent the wrong signal: as long as officials from rich western democracies continue to accept and propagate the Olympics as the measure of all things in sport, the IOC will not come to its senses.